15 Interesting Facts About the Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower is one of the world’s Seven Wonders and is also the heart of all of France. Located in the city of love and romance, it is a must see attraction for all honeymooners who visit Paris. Today I am here to share some interesting facts about the Eiffel Tower that you would keep you awe-stricken for days.

Fact 1 : The Eiffel Tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France has been named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built it.

Fact 2: The Eiffel Tower was inaugurated on March 31, 1889 when Gustave Eiffel climbed the 1,710 steps of the Tower to plant the French flag at its peak. He was followed by the members of the Council of Paris, which included Emile Chautemps, the President of the Paris City Council.

Fact 3: Bollywood actress Kalki Koechlin’s great-grandfather, Maurice Koechlin, was the Chief engineer for Eiffel Tower’s construction and also for the construction of the Statue of Liberty.

Fact 4: Let’s have a look at the numbers now. The Eiffel Tower was built using 18,038 pieces of wrought iron and was fastened with 2.5 million rivets. The tower weighs 10,100 tons and is 984,25 ft. high. It took a total of 300 workers to work on the construction of this tower.

The Tower weighs 10,100 tons, out of which the iron structure weighs 7,300 tons.

Fact 5: Another interesting fact about the tower is that it gets 6 inches taller during the summers. This is something hilarious but true that the Eiffel Tower witnesses an increased height during summers, which is 6 inches more than its usual height. This fact has a scientific reason behind it. This increase in height of the tower is because the scorching summer heat makes this steel structure to expand.

Fact 6: Once a woman tried to commit suicide from the Eiffel Tower but she landed on a car and later she married the person who owned that car. Well, such miracles don’t happen often.

This was an extremely rare incident where a suicide attempt led to a happy marriage. But, the actual facts state that the Eiffel tower has one of the highest suicide rates – 17.5 per 1000 people, which is a major concern for the French government.

Fact 7: The Eiffel Tower accommodates some 5 billion lights which make it a beautiful sight to experience during late evenings or nights when it is dark around. This most-loved French tower consumes 7.8 million kWh power per year.

Just think if you would have to pay the utility bill for it, where will you run off to?

Fact 8: A man tried to blow up the Eiffel Tower because the lights from the tower were entering his room and were not letting him sleep. This man Ivan Chtcheglov planned to use a stolen dynamite from some construction site to do so. But he was arrested and taken to a mental hospital.

Fact 9: The Eiffel Tower hosts a light show that runs for 5 minutes an hour, every night, until dawn.

At the time of New Year celebration, the Tower twinkles even more amazingly – ten minutes of every hour. That view is awe-inspiringly beautiful.

Fact 10: Another interesting fact about the heart of Paris is that the Tower was initially painted red in 1889.

Fact 11: A woman married the Eiffel Tower in a ceremony in 2007. Now this is something astonishing. Erika LaBrie turned into Erika Eiffel. She is an objectophile.

Fact 12: The deepest foundations of the Eiffel Tower are its North and West that lie 15 meters underground. Each of these foundations possesses four pillars of masonry, which bear the four uprights of each leg of the Tower, called rafters.

Fact 13: The Eiffel Tower remained the world’s tallest structure for 4 decades, until the 1,046 foot Chrysler Building in New York was completed in the year 1930.

Fact 14: The Tower top sways slightly in the wind. During a storm in 1999, the Tower moved approximately 13cm from its initial position.

The Eiffel Tower also gets affected with heat. During high temperature, the portion of the structure exposed to the sun expands more than the portion in the shade. The Tower can lean as much as 18cm to get out of the sun.When the Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 Paris Exposition, it was not intended to be kept forever. It was supposed to be demolished in 1909, but it was saved by being repurposed as a giant radio antenna.

Fact 15: This Tower project was first intended for Barcelona, Spain, but was rejected and that’s how we have the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France.

The paint on the Eiffel Tower weighs as much as 10 elephants.

An inventor named Franz Reichelt went to the Eiffel Tower to test his own designed parachute and he died by jumping from the Tower. Don’t test your parachutes from that high!

These facts might have really amazed you. Keep coming back for more fun facts!